OP Is not crazy. 820 on Verizon here (S7 Edge), and can confirm all the behaviors indicated.

This phone (like every Samsung Galaxy I've ever used) has a buttery problem. That is, things are just not buttery smooth. In most cases, most people don't notice it. Either they aren't bothered by the microstutter or don't care about it. But for those of us who do care and are used to either iPhone devices or Nexus devices, it's particularly terrible.

Just to clarify - I noticed microstutter in Alto's adventure within the first 5 seconds. It is constant and persistent and I find it annoying in a way that doesn't seem quite rational (it's like a constant tick that won't stop). I'm comparing performance to an iPhone 6s Plus where it is flawless.

Additionally, I find that Chrome is and always has been a non-starter for smoothness on Galaxy phones and it hasn't changed with the S7 edge. I expected that. The gaming performance/lag bothers me immensely. It makes me think that Samsung has fundamentally altered the rendering software on the phone or has fundamentally altered the phones behavior in another way. With it's focus on power saving in games, I wonder if they haven't attempted to implement a truly dynamic clock speed scaling implementation that can't keep up with fast games. For example, in Altos Adventure, this would explain why slowdown occurs as soon as something even minorly intensive starts to happen.

That's all speculation however. All I can really say is that there is an issue with rendering on my phone (and OPs phone). Additionally, disabling the two Game Services as identified in the XDA Forums gaming performance thread did not solve the issue (although it did solve the automatic screen saturation issue).

In short OP: You aren't alone, there is a problem, I don't think most people can perceive the problem in it's "minor' forms, and I am only holding out hope that Samsung fixes the game rendering issue... I hold no such hope for Chrome.

Glad to see someone checked out Alto and saw the bizarre frame dips, especially at the beginning when lots of deer or objects are on screen.

And to sum up, and from what i've read, there are some of us who are crazy about 60FPS butter and consistency, and others where it's really not a problem, or feel it's not enough to matter. I hope Samsung can continue working it out of their phones, because everything else is really spot on.

I returned my S7 Edge and will keep an eye out for the supposed HTC Nexus.

"So, are the S7 and S7 edge with Snapdragon 820 processors fast? I mean, I guess? Here’s the thing: these phones don’t feel any faster to me in day-to-day usage than a Galaxy S6 on Marshmallow. I mean that with complete sincerity. The only areas I really notice speed improvements are the camera and 3D performance (i.e., gaming). And in some areas, they actually seem slower sometimes.

On the Exynos version, though, I do feel things are faster. Apps load more quickly. Web pages scroll more fluidly. Hell, even the lockscreen feels more responsive. None of this is particularly encouraging for those of us with the Snapdragon 820 version here in the US. That feeling appears to be increasingly corroborated by informal testing.

Is it a bit odd that apart from America, where Qualcomm’s close relationship with US carriers ensures quick approvals of handsets with fewer certification hurdles (read: money), Samsung felt the best chipset for the Galaxy S7 was the Exynos? For a while, I thought it was simply a supply constraint or cost issue with the 820 - enough could not be produced for the whole world. And while that may well be true, why use it at all then? Surely Samsung could manage Exynos capacity for the US if it did so for the rest of the world (except China). Could it be that the 820 was chosen primarily for its ability to reduce the cost of doing business for Samsung in America, as opposed to it being “the best” chipset for the device? Comparing the two really has me wondering at this point, as I already prefer interacting with the Exynos version of the handset versus the noticeably slower 820."

From my experiences i can only determine that the only people giving these phones a good rating are sales men/women who are laughing at the idiots that buy this garbage. (me included).

crashes that had to be resolved via power/volume down buttons
laggy scrolling in all sorts of apps (up to 0.5 pauses)
keystrokes lag up to a word behind consistently (standard and gingerbread keyboards)
keypresses not happening at all, sometimes needing 3 presses.

my iphone 4 is better than this rubbish.

Btw android authority also don't like hearing this after giving the p.o.s. 9/10 they keep deleting my posts (and I haven't even sworn in them)

My phone has been factory reset then restored via google and still is rubbish. It is just over a week old and will be going back to the shop this week.

From my experiences i can only determine that the only people giving these phones a good rating are sales men/women who are laughing at the idiots that buy this garbage. (me included).

crashes that had to be resolved via power/volume down buttons
laggy scrolling in all sorts of apps (up to 0.5 pauses)
keystrokes lag up to a word behind consistently (standard and gingerbread keyboards)
keypresses not happening at all, sometimes needing 3 presses.

my iphone 4 is better than this rubbish.

Btw android authority also don't like hearing this after giving the p.o.s. 9/10 they keep deleting my posts (and I haven't even sworn in them)

My phone has been factory reset then restored via google and still is rubbish. It is just over a week old and will be going back to the shop this week.

The only way this phone could be buttery is by being put in a butter churn and being beaten to death.

From my experiences i can only determine that the only people giving these phones a good rating are sales men/women who are laughing at the idiots that buy this garbage. (me included).

crashes that had to be resolved via power/volume down buttons
laggy scrolling in all sorts of apps (up to 0.5 pauses)
keystrokes lag up to a word behind consistently (standard and gingerbread keyboards)
keypresses not happening at all, sometimes needing 3 presses.

my iphone 4 is better than this rubbish.

Btw android authority also don't like hearing this after giving the p.o.s. 9/10 they keep deleting my posts (and I haven't even sworn in them)

My phone has been factory reset then restored via google and still is rubbish. It is just over a week old and will be going back to the shop this week.

The only way this phone could be buttery is by being put in a butter churn and being beaten to death.

Because you sound like a troll maybe why they delete you. Not saying you are, but a lot of them sound that way. As you can see from the posts here, none of us are suffering the very unlikely experiences you are having, when taken into account how a lot of people find the phone stable and fast. This thread is nitpicking actually, looking for the microstutters than only people used to 60fps will ever notice.

Your case, either you got a lemon, was sold a fake one, you managed to get malware on it, or well, a troll. I've seen a lot of people buying flagship level devices, then proceed to run apps sourced from various shady sources, or even use apps like Clean Master or Du Saver (that actually slow down the phone to POS levels with repeated use of them) and experience similar to what you report.

Because you sound like a troll maybe why they delete you. Not saying you are, but a lot of them sound that way. As you can see from the posts here, none of us are suffering the very unlikely experiences you are having, when taken into account how a lot of people find the phone stable and fast. This thread is nitpicking actually, looking for the microstutters than only people used to 60fps will ever notice.

Your case, either you got a lemon, was sold a fake one, you managed to get malware on it, or well, a troll. I've seen a lot of people buying flagship level devices, then proceed to run apps sourced from various shady sources, or even use apps like Clean Master or Du Saver (that actually slow down the phone to POS levels with repeated use of them) and experience similar to what you report.

crashes are not micro stutters neither are .5 sec pauses during scrolling thank you very much.

it amazes me how there are plenty of people suffering from similar issues and the first thing people who supposedly aren't suffering from the same issues say is 'troll'. Maybe I have a lemon, which I will find out one way or another, or maybe they are all lemons and by chance all the people that are having an amazing time with them are the 'trolls'

people come to these forums in my opinion to help one another but it seems some of you are beyond helping others or possibly being helped

crashes are not micro stutters neither are .5 sec pauses during scrolling thank you very much.

it amazes me how there are plenty of people suffering from similar issues and the first thing people who supposedly aren't suffering from the same issues say is 'troll'. Maybe I have a lemon, which I will find out one way or another, or maybe they are all lemons and by chance all the people that are having an amazing time with them are the 'trolls'

people come to these forums in my opinion to help one another but it seems some of you are beyond helping others or possibly being helped

However in your case, the only way left is getting a new replacement. There's not much left to do on the user end other than possibly attempting a firmware repair via SmartSwitch or a full reflash. When a device is built by the millions, there will obviously be a few thousand, or even hundred thousands of lemons.

Note that in standard quality control of industrial manufacturing, they randomly get a number of phones per batch of shipments, possibly one every hundred or one every thousand, I don't know, to serve as the test device. Not every device gets tested. So if a bad batch goes through, well, thats up to tens of thousands of bad units going out there. Happens on any brand, even Apple. Heck they had that batch in Australia where iphones came out of the box with a cracked screen. The great thing about Apple is that they have the Genius Bars/Apple Stores, so people would less likely go online for help, but rather head to the Store and get their devices quickly fixed. Much quicker than online since unlike here where we talk you through stuff because we can't see the phone, and we don't have access to your phone for software we have for Android, on their stores they have their stuff right there.

That's one thing I never understood though. In US and in other Euro countries, apparently there's no Samsung Concept Stores? I mean there's one in every shopping mall if you're in an Asian country making it easier to deal with problems on their devices. That's really poor on their western counterparts.

yeah I know what you are saying, I have a background with industrial electronic equipment and there's always lemons. But in the case of these phones, online I see more bad than good, but I suppose that's the nature of how forums work, typically being more bad than good. That's why I don't understand why there are so many people having a great time with them, calling people "TROLLS", in these forums if they are supposedly NOT having issues. If took a step back they'd understand what they are doing is in fact trolling, if you don't have anything constructive to say then WHY ARE YOU HERE??

BTW it was a $30 piece of rubbish too.
Anyway I may have sorted some of my issues as of last night.

When I bought the phone I was sold an EFM glass screen protector with it, it's one of the useless ones that does not cover the full screen. Initially I thought it was just an annoyance not something that would cause crashes but, looks like it was the issue. I suppose I could potentially carry out hundreds of touches to the screen in one swipe if the screen protector is too thick or not made of the right material. Which could certainly count for crashes in some cases and laggy scrolling etc. I tried 4 different launchers that all crashed within hours of installing them which is why I was really starting to worry as I knew it wasn't related to the infamous touchwiz.

Anyway I have not had a "real" issue since I removed the rubbish screen protector, still a little lag but the lag is in the website not the phone I believe.

So hopefully someone finds this amongst all the TROLLING and benefits from it.

yeah I know what you are saying, I have a background with industrial electronic equipment and there's always lemons. But in the case of these phones, online I see more bad than good, but I suppose that's the nature of how forums work, typically being more bad than good. That's why I don't understand why there are so many people having a great time with them, calling people "TROLLS", in these forums if they are supposedly NOT having issues. If took a step back they'd understand what they are doing is in fact trolling, if you don't have anything constructive to say then WHY ARE YOU HERE??

BTW it was a $30 piece of rubbish too.
Anyway I may have sorted some of my issues as of last night.

When I bought the phone I was sold an EFM glass screen protector with it, it's one of the useless ones that does not cover the full screen. Initially I thought it was just an annoyance not something that would cause crashes but, looks like it was the issue. I suppose I could potentially carry out hundreds of touches to the screen in one swipe if the screen protector is too thick or not made of the right material. Which could certainly count for crashes in some cases and laggy scrolling etc. I tried 4 different launchers that all crashed within hours of installing them which is why I was really starting to worry as I knew it wasn't related to the infamous touchwiz.

Anyway I have not had a "real" issue since I removed the rubbish screen protector, still a little lag but the lag is in the website not the phone I believe.

So hopefully someone finds this amongst all the TROLLING and benefits from it.

Well that's new. I do use cheap screen protectors from time to time but I've never heard one cause problems like you had.

When you consider that there have been millions of S7 phones sold and if you add up all the forum complainers you maybe come up with 1,000, I'd say the problem ratio is indeed small. I'm not trying to shill for Samsung, just saying forums like these often attract people with some form of problem and when you compare those complaints against the number of phones in use and having no problems there really are few problems. Of course, if you are one of those with problems, none of that makes you feel any better.

Well, I have to say that after reading many of the comments here, I'm going to wait for the next Note. I was going to get the Samsung Edge , but I am not now. I have the Note 4 now and I'm very happy with it. So, I'll wait and see if there's a Note 6 coming out.